There is an old story about two men in a large city who were heading for a restaurant at lunchtime. As they walked, they saw a middle-aged man holding a Bible in his hand and shouting at people. He was a street preacher, as they were soon to find out. Just as they approached him, the evangelist reached out an arm, pointed a bony finger at the men and shouted “Guilty!”
One of the fellows turned to the other and said, “How did he know?”
If that story is true, and to my knowledge it is, the answer to the businessman’s question is that the evangelist knew full well that anyone he pointed to, anyone beyond “the age of accountability” was guilty of sinning.
Sin
In St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, we find that he points his finger in our direction. Yes, toward us. “All,” he wrote, “have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”1 No exceptions. Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!
In the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a novel called The Scarlet Letter. Its focus was on Hester, a woman married to an ogre-like man. Probably searching for tenderness and love, she had an affair. The result was the birth of a child and the condemnation of her by her Puritan neighbors.
Hester is sentenced to prison for a time. Upon her release, the leaders of her community compelled her to wear the letter “A” on her bosom.
